Cereal is a quaterly publication out of the UK, so you're not going to find it at your local newsstand unfortunately. I found my copy in a boutique right where it should be—next to a few of my favorite magazines: Gather, Kinfolk, and Diner Journal. It's part of the explosion of food related indy magazines now gracing the shelves of cool shops around the city.

Ceral's clean design, gorgeous photography and pretty nice paper stock makes it feel more like a book that you display on your coffee table and keep going back to it over and over.

You can browse the magazine online here or find a local shop that carries it here

Hi friends - sorry for the lack of posts lately. Since I last was here, I have taken on a new job as Art Director at San Francisco Magazine. It has been a pretty busy past few months and a complete change from my previous job as AD at Yoga Journal. I'm getting to work on a big variety of topics: food, fashion, travel, politics, etc. And I'm also getting to work with a bunch of awesome new photographers, and illustrators. I'll tell you more about them soon. In the meantime, here a few of the stories I've been working on.

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun but I have missed blogging, so now that I'm completely settled I can return to bringing you tons of new inspiration.

P.S. If you're in San Francisco please pick up a copy of the magazine at your nearest store. I promise it is full of great stories, awesome pics and illustrations, tons of restaurant listings, and of course great design.

I first started paying attention to the photography of Valeria Lazareva when I did a post years ago about Magnificent magazine. She shot the cover for that issue (and a few more) I posted about. Since then, her photography has continued to intrigue me. Her shots are like stills from a movie -- capturing a sense of nostalgia, freedom and sensuality with very compelling characters.

Valeria, is also an architect and lives in Odessa, Ukraine. Check out more of her beautiful work here.

I can't enough of the colorful and graphic illustrations of Swedish illustrator Kari Modén.

Inspired by pop-art, South American poster design, fashion and magazines Kari's work has been commissioned for advertising and editorial work, packaging, patterns, t-shirt prints, wall paintings and websites.

Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, GQ , Elle, The Guardian, New York Times Magazine, Vogue Living & Entertainment, and Wallpaper to name a few.

When prepping for a photo shoot I look for inspiration in all kinds of places - books, blogs, magazines, even my own collection of stamps! You just never know where that element you're looking for will come from so always keep your eyes peeled.

For my most recent food shoot, for example, I looked at fashion for color inspiration. The story I was art directing was about getting children to eat healthy foods so I wanted the styling to be fun but not childlike. I wanted to bring bright happy colors, and maybe some patterns, so off I went searching.

A good reliable resource for color inspiration is the blog Color Collective. That's where I found the tear above. The clothes are from Jonathan Saunders Fall 2011 collection, and they had exactly the mix of patterns and colors I was imagining. This was the perfect starting point to create a moodboard to send to the photographer and prop stylist. When I got to the set, I was welcomed with the most awesome selection of plates, bowls and linens. Aren't they perfect? Way to make an AD very happy!